


Golden Morning

by Laylah



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Adventure, Canon - Manga, Confidence, Escape, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-14
Updated: 2009-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:36:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tell me your story,” Greed says, watching her hungrily, his fingertips tracing the red lines on her shoulder from the lab.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Morning

She’s learned to mostly shut out the howling from the other cages. She’s had to: anyone who can’t shut it out can’t sleep, and anyone who can’t sleep goes mad. Anyone who goes mad is reclassified a failure, no matter how well the experiment went.

Still, when the howling changes tone, Martel sits up, groggy and nervous. The failed chimeras have more instincts than the ones who can still pass for human, and anything that makes them forget their pain in favor of fear is bad news. Sometimes the researchers make them do that—but it’s the middle of the night. The alchemists all went home hours ago.

“Any ideas?” Martel asks. She can see the heat of Dorochet’s body in the dark to her right.

“Don’t know,” he says. “I can smell _something_ bad, but I don’t know what it is.”

Then they can hear the sharp echoing sound of boot heels on the tile, and a man’s smooth, confident baritone from the other end of the room: “Hey, hey, take it easy. I don’t want to hurt you.” A dull thud as one of the failures throws itself against the bars of its cage, snarling. The same voice: “Fine, suit yourself. Doesn’t sound like you’d be much fun to go drinking with, anyway.”

He’s moving again, and as he comes into view Martel hisses under her breath. He can’t be human. Humans are warm all over, maybe a little cooler at their fingertips than in the center of their bodies — nothing like this. The intruder is barely warmer than she is, except for one blazing radiant spot in the center of his chest and a few faint lines across his torso.

“How about you guys?” he asks, stopping in front of their cage, acting for all the world like he can see just fine in the near-blackness of the lab. “You want to come out and play?”

“You’re not human,” Dorochet says, loudly enough for the others to hear.

“According to the rumors, you guys aren’t, either,” the guy says with a shrug. “Didn’t think you’d hold it against me.”

Hell, he’s honest with them, which is more than the damned alchemists have been. “We don’t,” Martel says quickly. “How do you plan to get the doors open? The locks work on a code. There isn’t even a key to steal.”

The guy laughs, sounding delighted. “Fortunately,” he says, “the code I have has never let me down.” He holds up one hand and something happens that makes it _glow_ with heat, and then the room reeks of alchemy strongly enough that even Martel can smell it. At the other end of the room, the failures start howling again. “Where do I enter this code?”

“At — at the end of the row,” Dorochet says. His voice shakes, just a little. Martel reaches for his hand to steady him as the stranger goes off to investigate. “Are we sure this is a good idea?” he asks softly.

“No,” Martel whispers. “But it’s a chance to get out.”

The sound of the guy’s boots on the tile stops, and there’s a second of heavy, expectant silence—and then a smash, loud and sudden, and electrical sparking and hissing, and the heavy clang as all the cell doors unlock at once.

“Come on,” their rescuer calls. “There’s a whole world out there that’s ours for the taking. Who’s with me?”

Martel pushes the door open, and she can feel Dorochet beside her as they step out of the cell, unrestrained unsupervised uncontrolled for the first time in years. The alarms go off in the lab, red light flickering to life and the noise almost drowned by panicked howling of the failures in response. The other survivors all look like Martel feels — stricken, disbelieving, wanting so fucking bad to hope. She catches Law’s eye and grins.

“This way,” the stranger says. There’s something black on his hands, and when he swipes at the lock on the emergency exit, he leaves deep claw-gouges in the door. His smile is sharp and cocky, and he meets Martel’s eyes over the rims of a pair of dark glasses.

“Let’s go,” she says, moving before she’s even thought about it. There’s something about him that makes her _hungry_ , that makes her feel alive, that makes the sleeping instincts in her belly uncoil and stretch toward his heat.

They’re barefoot and weaponless and not dressed for the weather, but Martel can’t even bring herself to mind the cold of the pavement as they sprint away from the lab. The moon’s half-full. There are stars. The air smells like grass and dew and exhaust and rust, and _not_ like disinfectant or stale sweat or fear.

Bido can still use his hands, despite what’s happened to them, and he remembers how to hotwire a truck. Law slides behind the wheel and the rest of them pile in as the engine roars to life, and when he says, “Where we headed, boss?” their rescuer grins and answers, “Anywhere but here.”

He throws an arm around Martel’s shoulders and grins at her, his teeth jagged-sharp as a shark’s. “I’m Greed,” he says. “What’s your name, lovely?”

“Martel.” She manages to hold still, barely, not leaning into him, not breathing deeper to catch the scent of leather and cigarettes, not reaching up to pet the fur ruff of his vest just for a chance to _feel_. He makes her feel dizzy, energized, alive like she hasn’t been since that last battle on the southern frontier left her bleeding out onto the sand.

“Tell me your story,” Greed says, watching her hungrily, his fingertips tracing the red lines on her shoulder from the lab.

So she does. She’s never been much of a storyteller, but she tells him all the important parts: how they were soldiers, the best team in special ops; how they’d run into a bad ambush and half the squad got wiped out; how the rest of them probably _would_ have died if they hadn’t been picked up like they were; how they were taken to the lab instead of a hospital; how the bastards there transmuted them with animals.

The truck sputters and stalls as she’s explaining their theory that they were going to be sent back to war once the alchemists were sure they were all strong enough again.

“Last stop,” Law calls. “We’re out of gas.” He eases the truck off the road, lets it roll into a ditch and lurch to a halt.

Greed smiles at Martel as they climb out of the truck, a little sideways grin like they’re kids having some kind of adventure. She can’t help grinning back.

They’re outside the city now, whatever city it was that housed the lab — somewhere south of Central, she’d guess, from the flat grassy plains and the faint scent of honeysuckle on the breeze. The grass is wet under Martel’s feet as they start across the fields, away from the road.

When they’re far enough that they can’t see the truck anymore, Dorochet starts to chant one of their old jodies. A couple of the guys join in on the second verse, and the rest of them pick it up when Dorochet starts making up new words about the lab in the third. Greed lopes along silently beside them, grinning whenever one of the new verses says something especially unflattering about the alchemists.

Bido’s the first to flag. What those bastards did to him has left him with the shortest stride of any of them, and not much stamina, either. “Keep going,” Greed tells the rest of them when Bido stumbles, falls to the dirt. “We need to clear the river before daybreak.” He drops back and crouches down, helps Bido up onto his back.

“I can catch up,” Bido protests as Greed jogs back up to rejoin the group. “I’m going to slow you down.”

“No, you’re not,” Greed says firmly. He moves like Bido’s weight is nothing at all. “And you’re one of mine, now. You don’t get left.”

Martel feels a little shiver down her spine at that, and she’d bet she’s not the only one. Nobody’s gotten like that about their team since Shrike died in the ambush. They’ve been prisoners since then, captives and experiments and freaks of nature—but they haven’t had anywhere to _belong_.

The river is the worst part, just like she expected. It’s pretty shallow, at least, only waist-deep, but they’re in it for a long time, stumbling downstream, feet slipping on smooth stones. The cold seeps into her bones, makes her joints ache, makes her feel sluggish. Nobody has the breath to spare for jodies anymore, so the only sound is the soft slosh of the water as they wade through it.

“This way,” Greed says at last, coming up out of the water and heading toward a lone house just visible on the horizon, barely darker than the night sky. Getting out of the water is almost worse than walking through it—every breeze feels freezing now.

“You know somebody up there?” Martel asks through chattering teeth.

“No,” Greed says, unconcerned, “but I’m pretty good at being persuasive.”

“Like how you’re pretty good at unlocking doors?”

He laughs. “Just like.” He reaches out and rests a hand on her shoulder, and pauses. “You okay, sweetheart? You’re freezing.”

Martel shivers, shakes her head. “I’m a—I’m part—they fused me with a snake. I get cold easily.” She can still see his heat, a strange extra color that she has no name for.

He glances over his shoulder at Bido. “You okay to walk the rest of the way?”

“Sure,” Bido says, letting go and sliding to the ground. “Look after Martel.”

Greed turns back to her, and smiles. “Come here, darling.”

Before she’s really had a chance to protest, he picks her up, cradling her close to his chest. The strength of his arms makes her heart beat faster, and the heat radiating from his core makes her lean into him hungrily.

“Where are you getting the strength for this?” she asks, resting her head on his shoulder, on his fur collar.

“You said it yourself earlier.” He hasn’t even slowed down, carrying her weight up the hill toward that house. “I’m not human.” He sounds...proud of it, she realizes. Proud of his inhumanity.

At the top of the hill, he hands her off to Law. She wants to protest, wants to point out that she’s just as much of a soldier as the rest of them, but the warmth feels so good, it’s hard to resist.

“Surprised we haven’t run into any dogs,” Greed says, studying the house. He flexes his hands, and hot blackness crawls over them, leaving him with claws again.

“There aren’t any,” Dorochet says. He scents the air. “There’s a cow or two in the barn, but no dogs. Not lately.”

Greed doesn’t ask how he can tell, just nods. “I’m going to like working with you guys.” He looks them over. “Give me five minutes, then come on in.”

“Someone should go with you,” Law points out. Martel can feel the rumble of his voice where she’s curled against his chest.

“You’ll all get chances to prove yourselves later,” Greed tells them. “Right now you’re tired, and you’re unarmed.” He smiles. “Besides, I’m bulletproof.”

“You’re crazy,” Dorochet mutters after Greed has left, but he sounds about half impressed.

Martel shivers, tries to make herself smile. “Kind of nice to have one of the crazies on our side for once, though.”

“Damn right,” Bido says, wrapping his tail around himself. “You think he really is?”

“Crazy, or bulletproof?” Martel asks—and whatever reply Bido makes is drowned out by the roar of a shotgun from the house.

“Guess we’ll find out,” Dorochet says solemnly. They sit there in silence for another minute. A light goes on in one of the downstairs windows. Then the door swings open, a tall, lanky figure silhouetted in the doorway.

“What are you waiting for?” Greed calls. “There’s a fire going in here, and food in the cupboards.”

The house smells faintly of gunpowder and blood when they walk in, but it’s warm, and they’ve all seen worse. They gravitate toward the fire, drawn to the heat and light. Law pulls his shirt off over his head, and then they’re all following suit, stripping out of their wet clothes.

Martel hesitates for a second—the guys are no big deal, but Greed’s never seen her naked before, and—and who’s she kidding? The wet clothes are cold, she’s got nothing to be ashamed of, and chances are she’d be showing him soon enough anyway.

Besides, he’s doing it, too: he’s already draped his vest over the back of a chair, and now he’s reaching for the buttons of his pants—and she’s not staring, really, not at all—and then there’s the crackle of alchemy again and the blackness that she’d thought was a shirt melts into his skin.

Dorochet shudders, baring his teeth. “Warn me when you’re going to do that, boss. The smell is....” He shifts awkwardly, something trapped and hunted in his eyes.

“That bad, huh?” Greed asks, grinning. He skins out of his pants casually, stretching, like he’s daring her—all of them—to look. There are red lines running over his shoulders, his sides, his back—they look purposeful, important, and she’s reminded of the tracks the experiment left across her neck and shoulder.

“It smells like alchemy,” Dorochet says stiffly.

Greed shrugs. “It probably is,” he says. “I’m the product of alchemy, after all.”

“You’re a chimera, too?” Law asks.

“Nah.” Greed shakes his head. “You guys are the first human chimeras I’d ever heard of. Me,” he holds up his left hand, showing off the symbol marked on it, “I’m a homunculus. Completely artificial.”

“Huh,” Law says. “I heard there was no such thing.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘no such thing,’” Greed says smugly, grinning with those jagged rows of teeth.

Martel tunes out the conversation after that—it starts to get technical, goes into stuff she doesn’t understand or care about. The heat of the fire makes her restless, gives back all the energy that the river stole earlier. She leaves her wet clothes where they are and wanders off to explore.

At the top of the stairs, the smell of powder is stronger. She looks closer, and realizes that the wall here is peppered with little scorched holes from the blast of a shotgun — and that there’s a human-shaped outline where no shot penetrated. She traces that outline with her fingertips, and shivers.

Most of the doors along the upstairs hallway are open, but there’s one down at the end that’s been pulled shut. She reaches for the knob.

“You probably don’t want to open that.”

She looks up, sees Greed’s weird heat signature at the top of the stairs. “I don’t, huh?”

“Nothing worth seeing in there,” Greed says, walking toward her. She’s suddenly unpleasantly conscious of being naked, never mind that he hasn’t bothered to dress, either.

“That where you’re hiding the bodies?” she asks, trying to smile.

He laughs. “It’s hardly hiding them if it’s that easy to guess, isn’t it?” He steps well inside arm’s reach, too close to be polite, giving her that wolf grin again. She can feel the hairs standing up on the back of her neck.

“What do you want, Greed?”

The look in his eyes is so focused, so inhuman and starved, it makes her heart skip a beat. “Everything,” he whispers.

Martel takes a step back before she’s realized she’s going to do it. “That why you’re here?” she asks. At least her voice doesn’t shake. She wanted to, she reminds herself. Stupid to get all reluctant just because he does, too.

“That’s always why I’m anywhere.” He blinks, deliberately, and the burning hunger in his eyes recedes a little, becomes less obvious. He let her see it on purpose, she realizes. To show her what he is, what that weird, focused heat in his chest looks like when it reaches the surface. “What about you, sweetheart? What do you want?”

“Been a long time since that mattered,” she says. Like hell she’s going to give him the answer he’s clearly looking for.

He doesn’t drop his gaze. “It matters now.”

God help her, she believes him. He’s a monster, a perfect predator, stronger and deadlier than any human could hope to be, and she’s _still_ less afraid of him than she was of those creeps in the lab. “I want to watch the sun rise.”

“Well, come on, then,” he says, stepping back a pace. “I bet we can get a hell of a view from the roof.”

Martel finds herself smiling in disbelief as she follows him into one of the empty bedrooms. Things aren’t this simple — there’s more give and take to life. Things have _costs_. Except that Greed doesn’t seem to work that way. You want out of that cage? I’ll break the door down. You want shelter? We’ll take this house. You want to see the sunrise? Let’s climb up to the roof and watch it.

She pulls the quilt off the bed and carries it with her as she follows him out the gable window and onto the roof. She wraps it around her shoulders and perches next to him. “You don’t get cold?”

“I can feel the cold, but it doesn’t bother me.” He gives her a flirtatious little grin. “I’m pretty hard to damage.”

Martel laughs. “Yeah, I saw the wall, back there.” Somehow, the creepy tension is eased, out here, and the—the _other_ tension is coming back instead.

Greed stretches out, getting comfortable, a sprawl of long muscular limbs. “Does it bother you?”

She looks over at him, meets his unnatural eyes for a second. “I don’t know yet. I mean, it’s pretty creepy, but it has come in handy.”

He smiles, and doesn’t say anything, just sits there with her quietly as they watch the gray of false dawn suffuse the sky. He sits perfectly still, not shifting or shivering — Martel can’t even tell if he’s breathing, but she’s not sure she wants to ask. The fact that he’s not cold is weird enough.

 _She’s_ getting chilled even with the blanket. She shivers, and tugs it tighter around her. The alchemy didn’t make her really cold-blooded, but it has made it a lot harder for her to keep her body temperature up.

“You want heat?” Greed asks.

Martel looks up at him sharply. “You’re barely warmer than I am,” she says. “I can see it.”

“Yeah?” He grins. “Then watch this.” The weird hot spot in his core—in his heart, if he has one—glows, and then she can see the heat radiating out from it. She watches it spread through his body until he’s warm all the way through.

“Damn,” she says. It’s tempting, to take him up on that, to curl into his arm and bask in his heat, his strength. “Just sharing warmth?”

He shrugs. “You tell me.”

She shifts closer, and he reaches out, wraps an arm around her to hold her against him. It feels _good_ , heat radiating from his skin and his body firm and solid. She rests her head against his shoulder, relaxing slowly into his arms as the first touch of color appears on the horizon. It’s been so long since she felt this comfortable, since she had anything to look forward to.

They’ll probably have pursuers after them tomorrow. Martel realizes that the one thing she _doesn’t_ want is to regret a chance she didn’t take. She turns in Greed’s arms, meeting his eyes as steadily as she can. “What I want,” she says, but she means it as a question.

And Greed seems to understand that, because he keeps the hunger banked and smoldering in the depths of his eyes, and just says, “Yes.”

So she kisses him, stretching up to wrap one hand around the back of his neck. He pulls her into his lap, moaning into her mouth, and the sound sparks a flare of golden heat low in her belly, like his desire is contagious, like she can absorb it through his mouth and his hands and his hardening cock. His hands are broad and strong, possessive, one splayed across her back to hold her close while the other slides over her hip and up her side to cup her breast. She arches into his touch, and the blanket slides down off her shoulders. The contrast between the cool morning air and the heat of Greed’s body makes her feel dizzy, restless, _alive_.

His thumb circles her nipple, and she moans in response, holding on tight to him. She uncoils her legs, shifting in his lap so she can straddle one of his thighs and grind against him hard.

“Yes,” he purrs, biting gently at her throat, teeth just grazing skin. “Take what you need, lovely, just like that.” He licks the alchemy brand where it snakes up her neck, and she shudders at how sensitive it is—how it reacts to his touch as though the alchemy inside him is crawling over its lines, into her blood.

“More,” she tells him, rocking her hips, sliding slick against his muscular thigh. “Do that again.”

He makes a soft growling noise that sends a shiver down her spine, and bites harder, sucking, marking her. The alchemy lying dormant in her limbs reacts to the energy humming in his body, and she feels like she’s activated her power, like her limbs are flexing and extending beyond the limits of possibility, and it’s _right_ this time, for the first time, thrilling instead of horrific, and it’s all she can do to hang on.

“Come on, pretty girl,” Greed purrs, wrapping his hands around her hips. “Give it to me.” His voice is low and ragged with hunger, as animal as any of them get, and she lets him pull her down, coiling her legs bonelessly around his waist. He growls in surprise, in pleasure, and then she hisses in response as his cock slides into her, hot and thick and hard.

It’s not like she remembers from before, and she doesn’t think the difference is all because of Greed—she’s going to have to re-learn this, too, the way she re-learned all the basic human things she took for granted. She buries her face in his shoulder, holding tight, and bites at the hollow of his throat.

“Mm, here,” Greed says, moving her, guiding her mouth to one of the red marks on his shoulder. “Bite down here.”

She bites, and he shudders under her, inside her, moaning and thrusting helplessly. His hands flex and _change_ , and claws skate over her back for a second before he has the presence of mind to change back. “More?” she asks, tracing the bite mark with her tongue.

“Yes,” Greed snarls, “yes, always, _more_ ,” and thrusts in deep, holding her down on his cock. She bites harder this time, tilting her hips to take advantage of his desperate response.

“There,” she says, her nails digging into his back, “fuck, right there,” and then she gasps against his skin instead of biting again, because he splays one hand low across her belly and reaches down to rub her clit. It’s good, god, it’s good, heat and light gathering right there, right where his hand and his cock stroke her and right now all she wants is for him to just not stop oh _god_ , and maybe she’s saying that aloud because he’s answering her, _Not going to stop, fuck, want to feel you come, give it to me, pretty girl, come for me_ , and she thinks maybe just maybe it’s the need in his voice that actually pushes her over, makes her back arch and the heat burst golden inside her, makes her convulse and constrict around him and muffle her cries against his shoulder as she comes.

“So good,” Greed murmurs, breathing the words into her hair, cradling her against him. “So lovely, my pretty, deadly girl.” He nips delicately at her ear, his hands running over her back in long, slow strokes. “Stay with me. Be the knife in my hands.”

Martel reaches down and catches one of his hands, laces their fingers together. She looks so delicate, next to his raw-boned strength. “Your hands make perfectly good knives on their own,” she says with a little smile.

Greed laughs softly. In the faint light of approaching dawn, his face looks gentler somehow, not quite as sharp-edged. “Stay with me anyway,” he says, and kisses her again.

She kisses back, slow and lazy and content. “I go where my squad goes,” she says. “We’ve been through hell—we’re not splitting up now.”

“All the better,” Greed says, squeezing her hand. “Bring your team with you. We’ll travel. See the world.” He gives her that crooked, devilish smile. “Conquer it, maybe.”

“What, just us?” It’s crazy to even say it. From anyone else, she’d be sure it was a joke. But Greed...seems to be good at this, at just reaching out and taking whatever he wants. Anything. Everything.

He shrugs. “Maybe we’ll pick up some allies along the way.” She smiles back—she can’t help it—and he kisses her again, then reaches up to cradle her face in one hand, to turn her head gently. She looks out, toward the east: the sun has just cleared the horizon, spilling golden, brilliant light over the fields. Greed nuzzles under her jaw, kisses the pulse point in her throat. “I’ll be so good to you, lovely. Say yes.”

He rocks his hips, starts to thrust slowly again, still hard inside her. Martel closes her eyes, and the afterimage of the rising sun dances across her lids. She’ll be able to feel its warmth soon, feel that glow on her skin. She wraps her arms around Greed’s back. “Yes.”


End file.
